Spring Break
Abandonment doesn't fix pet overpopulation
Beth Clothier
Issue date: 10/26/09 Section: Opinion
During his long reign as host of "The Price is Right," Bob Barker made a daily plea for viewers to spay and neuter their pets, reducing the ever-increasing population of unwanted and stray animals.
Animal shelters are filled with abandoned dogs and cats, and commercials are run by the hour on television asking the public to make donations to help shoulder the responsibility of these poor discarded animals.
However, according to myfoxdc.com, a new book written by Robert and Brenda Vale, both of whom are professors at Victoria University in New Zealand, seems to ask that we forget about these animals altogether. The book, which is titled "Time to Eat the Dog: The Real Guide to Sustainable Living," maintains that keeping dogs as pets is as bad for the environment as driving an SUV. Their solution? Trade in these animals for smaller creatures such as chickens and rabbits, which will also provide food for the family.
I can understand wanting to reduce our carbon footprint and nurture our environment so that it can sustain life for generations to come, but what happens to all of these animals if we were to follow this plan? Would they simply be abandoned, left to roam wildly and forage for food for survival? True, these creatures were once wild, but after so many years of domestication, it would be harder for them to survive. Releasing these creatures into the world would be akin to taking an animal that has been raised in a zoo from birth and sending it out into the world. Its survival instincts have been dulled, and therefore its chances of making it for very long are slim to none.
So what then? Do we just euthanize all the pet dogs and cats of the world so we have a chance to live a little bit longer? It's not bad enough that our presence and our destruction via industrialism and colonization has made several species extinct, or brought them to a degree of existence that necessitated an endangered species list. Now we have to add Spot and Whiskers to the roll call of human failures.
There are easier and more humane things we can do to help reduce our impact on the planet, such as carpooling, recycling and using "green" materials in our everyday lives, taking responsibility for our existence. The idea of abandoning our pets is for the birds.
Animal shelters are filled with abandoned dogs and cats, and commercials are run by the hour on television asking the public to make donations to help shoulder the responsibility of these poor discarded animals.
However, according to myfoxdc.com, a new book written by Robert and Brenda Vale, both of whom are professors at Victoria University in New Zealand, seems to ask that we forget about these animals altogether. The book, which is titled "Time to Eat the Dog: The Real Guide to Sustainable Living," maintains that keeping dogs as pets is as bad for the environment as driving an SUV. Their solution? Trade in these animals for smaller creatures such as chickens and rabbits, which will also provide food for the family.
I can understand wanting to reduce our carbon footprint and nurture our environment so that it can sustain life for generations to come, but what happens to all of these animals if we were to follow this plan? Would they simply be abandoned, left to roam wildly and forage for food for survival? True, these creatures were once wild, but after so many years of domestication, it would be harder for them to survive. Releasing these creatures into the world would be akin to taking an animal that has been raised in a zoo from birth and sending it out into the world. Its survival instincts have been dulled, and therefore its chances of making it for very long are slim to none.
So what then? Do we just euthanize all the pet dogs and cats of the world so we have a chance to live a little bit longer? It's not bad enough that our presence and our destruction via industrialism and colonization has made several species extinct, or brought them to a degree of existence that necessitated an endangered species list. Now we have to add Spot and Whiskers to the roll call of human failures.
There are easier and more humane things we can do to help reduce our impact on the planet, such as carpooling, recycling and using "green" materials in our everyday lives, taking responsibility for our existence. The idea of abandoning our pets is for the birds.
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